Review: Wanderlust

The big question going into Wanderlust was, is it a David Wain/Ken Marino movie with all the people from The State, or is it more of a Jennifer Aniston rom-com? After having seen it, my conclusion is that it’s not really either. It’s more like if you got some of the funniest people in the world together and had them try to please a studio exec. To put it even more simply, it’s a funny movie filled with funny people doing funny bits in service of a fairly generic story that’s hard to care about.

Most Likable Man in Show Business Paul Rudd and Most Why-Does-Everyone-Seem-to-Hate-Her Woman in Show Business Jennfer Aniston play New York couple George and Linda. They’ve just bought a studio apartment (a “microloft,” the realtor calls it) that they’re not sure they can afford. Then George loses his job and HBO passes on Linda’s documentary about penguins with testicular cancer, and they definitely can’t afford it. With nowhere to go, they pack all their possessions into a Honda and set out for Atlanta, where George’s brother played by Ken Marino has promised him a job at his port-a-potty business. They take a wrong turn near Albequerque, end up at a wacky hippie commune where Jo Lo Truglio runs around with his big, rubbery fake dick hanging out, and away we go.

Nothing against a simplistic studio comedy narrative, especially one that we all know going in is just a skeleton on which to pack the joke-meats, it’s just that this one paints Wain and Co. into a corner even more so than something like Wet Hot American Summer or even Stepbrothers or I Love You Man. We all know the final resolution is going to lie somewhere between the soulless yuppieism of New York and the fanatical hippieism of the commune, so it’s hard to keep the story unpredictable. Therefore all the laughs have to come at a micro level — the way people act and say things, quirks of character, a drug-tripping sequence (amazing, incidentally). I can’t imagine many better at finding those micro laughs than Wain, Marino, Rudd, Kathryn Hahn, Jordan Peele, et. al, but it’s restrictive, like me having to wear pants.

Ken Marino plays the crass materialist of the story, and the sequence in his big McMansion in Atlanta, with his drunk, checked-out wife (played brilliantly by Michaela Watkins) and asshole son, is so perfect from start to finish that it makes you wish the movie was about Rudd going to live with Marino, instead of him joining a commune. Marino doesn’t have the responsibility of moving the whole story forward like Paul Rudd does, but the man absolutely murders every scene he’s in and fires its corpse out of a cannon. It could be that suburban malaise is a less stale topic than loopy veganism, or it could just be that he’s the most underrated comedic actor around.

There are a lot of laughs in Wanderlust, but there’s a big problem with studio comedies these days, and that problem is “test audiences.” Studios screen movies like this exhaustively in front of test audiences trying to find the perfect formula for the most laughs like it’s a math equation. The problem with trying to find a perfect balance with the maximum amount of net laughs across a broad spectrum of moviegoers is that in trying to please everyone, you lose the soul of the creator. You get movies that are “funny” in a general sense, but lack personality (sadly, this is the best way to make money). Any comic will tell you, hack jokes are hack because they work. But if you tell too many of them just to hear the sound of laughter, your set starts to feel less like you and more like generic comedy. It’s funny, but not memorable. There was a dorky older critic I can’t stand sitting behind me during Wanderlust, and we laughed and groaned at perfectly opposite intervals, him loving the less blue, less absurd, more politically correct stuff, and me the opposite. Technically it “pleased” both of us, but I suspect neither of us loved it. Also, f*ck that guy. Why are you trying to please that dick anyway? He’s a 50-year-old man who wears a suede beret for God’s sake.

There are a number of regrettable story turns, including a greedy developer looking to bulldoze the commune, a recreation of the famous grape-stomp lady video, and another example of the strange Hollywood taboo against male infidelity. There’s an odd phenomenon in Hollywood comedies right now where whenever a woman cheats on her husband, it’s because he hadn’t been paying enough attention to her, and instead of saying “f*ck it” and banging his secretary, he has to learn the error of his ways to win her back (see also: Crazy Stupid Love). But if a guy cheats, it’s because he’s a worthless A-hole and the woman better leave him if she respects herself. I wouldn’t call it reverse sexism, it’s more like overcompensation by male screenwriters. In any case, Wanderlust has both. I want to believe that Wain and his co-writer Marino wanted to play up these story tropes as parody like they do so well in Children’s Hospital, but had to keep them earnest at the behest of the scared studio. Either way, it comes off lacking in edge.

But here’s the thing, the cliché and hard-to-believe infidelity subplot isn’t a throwaway. It sets up a scene of Paul Rudd giving himself a pep talk in the mirror that’s one of the funnier things I’ve seen this year. Like seriously pinch-your-dick-so-you-don’t-piss-yourself funny. It’s hard to say right now whether those scenes like Ken Marino smashing a plate or Paul Rudd dirty talking himself in the mirror are memorable enough to transcend the predictable story. They did in Tommy Boy and I Love You, Man, but that’s not something you can decide fresh out of the theater. It’s something you only realize a year or two down the line when you’re still quoting it.

I saw an advance screening on Wednesday and agree with this review. There were some really funny moments in the movie, but I don’t think I would watch the movie again. That said, the Paul Rudd mirror scene was indeed hilarious. Also, Kathryn Hahn can do no wrong in my book and Ken Marino’s wife was surprisingly awesome!

There may as well have been crickets in the theatre for the recreation of the grape stomping video. It was an odd choice to do that with such an old video.

The implication that Paul Rudd wouldn’t want to fuck Kathryn Hahn also pissed me off. I know everyone in this movie is either hot or Hollywood ugly (mildly less hot), but Kathryn Hahn is still pretty do-able.

I caught a screening in Atlanta (yes, everybody whooped when the “Welcome to Georgia” sign popped up) and the crowd was gasping for breath during Rudd’s mirror scene. The movie itself isn’t a future classic, but that scene definitely is.

There’s alot of fun to be had commenting about Gary Busey’s storage locker & Chelsea Handler haunting sunken pirate ships, but in all seriousness – You write a damned entertaining review. If I wasn’t already a sucker for Paul Rudd & the Wain/Marino dream-team I feel like this would’ve swayed my decision a bit in favour of checking it out. Props, señor

It’s really hard for me to need plot in a comedy. If a movie has no plot, then it bugs me, but as long as something is there, I’ll go along with it. The great comedies have great plots, but some don’t as you already mentioned.

Last year was soft in the comedy genre and Wanderlust seems to be a good enough comedy to even consider seeing.

Marino is perfect. A great example of his underratedness(?) is in WHAS when the slutty girl who makes out with everyone sets her sights on him in the cafeteria, and he is so nervous that out of nowhere he tosses his lunch tray and tries to play it off…it’s way funnier to see than it sounds.

The real problem with this is that Apatow produced it. Apatow films are only funny for as long as they ignore or don’t take their plots seriously (my favorite Apatow produced film is probably “Walk Hard” just because it didn’t take its plot seriously at all). They tend to have the most shitty cliched plots ever, so they always end up getting dragged down by the plot in the end. Even his pretty good films (stuff like “40 Year Old Virgin”) tend to drag in the sections where they stop to tick through their basic formulas like some sort of tedious checklist, and at other times this can even ruin films which otherwise have some really funny bits (see: “Bridesmaids” “Knocked Up”).

PS: I will give him some credit for moving outside of basic formulas with “Funny People.” That was probably his most original and innovative film in terms of character and plotting. I actually think that movie’s kind of underrated, even if I don’t think it’s his funniest film.

i dug it. like, really. always been a fan of wain, et al, and i went in knowing what i was going to get and enjoyed the hell out of it. i knew what would happen, storywise, and i didn’t care. i just laughed at the comedy. in the end, that’s all i wanted.

I’ll probably see this but with reservations…..the biggest one being the dongs.

Not that I particularly care about dongs (wife and I watch porno all.the.time)….it’s just, very rarely is a penis funny….and the use of penis for shock humor is so passe, it has gotten to the point where it is, basically, a nutshot in a trailer as being an indicator of the humor in the movie.

I trust these guys, because I also loved The State….but reading the review line “A fully nude man stands next to a bed where a man sleeps with his wife (we see the man’s penis) and the sleeping man is alarmed when he wakes up and sees the other man’s penis near his face.”….That is basically the exact same penis joke they did in both Hall Pass and Walk Hard. A penis near the face….how uncomfortable and shocking.

I’ll admit to being one of those people who doesn’t like Jennifer Aniston all that much. I found it kind of interesting that you didn’t mention her at all in the review outside of the initial set-up. I guess I’m happy if she’s not really doing any of the comedic legwork, but I’m kind of curious how she is in the movie. She was funny in ‘Horrible Bosses’, so did she get to do anything funny or was she just the straight woman to the brilliance of everybody else?